March 20, 2013 -- Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the addition of an Early Access section to Steam's library of over 2,000 titles.

Steam Early Access titles allow the community to get involved early and play select titles during their development. The goal of Early Access is to provide gamers with the chance to "go behind the scenes" and experience the development cycle firsthand and, more importantly, have a chance to interact with the developers by providing them feedback while the title is still being created.

To support the interaction between Early Access players and developers, Steam offers easy and automatic updating of games, letting developers iterate quickly to respond directly to bug reports and feedback from customers. And, like all Steam games, Early Access players will be able to interact with other players, making it easy to create and share screenshots, tips, and in-depth guides.

"A lot of games are already operating as ongoing services that grow and evolve with the involvement of customers and the community," said Sean Pollman of Badland Studio. "Greenlight helped us raise awareness for Kinetic Void, and now Steam Early Access will let us continue the development of our game while gathering crucial feedback, input and support from the steam Community."

Krizzen wrote on Mar 20, 2013, 19:19:Whew! At first I imagined Valve was offering a subscription based service for early access. Looks like they'll maintain their "do no evil" image!

yuastnav wrote on Mar 20, 2013, 16:55:Kerbal Space program also looked interesting (at least judging by this article from Christopher Livingston on PCGamer, guess I gotta try the demo).

If you have more than a passing interest in space, Kerbal Space Program is AMAZING. It's nice to see it hit Steam (in some form). You'll probably be hitting the Wiki and forums if you don't know what an apoapsis or periapsis are. It's such a rewarding experience to build your own rocket and payload, launch it into orbit, and land on the moon.

I finally played the dame and I must say that this is really cool.Whereas I am still not sure about Prison Architect because apparently the finished product will be cheaper I am seriously considering buying Kerbal Space Program.There are still a lot of things I need to get used to but it's much easier to pick up than I initially thought.

SpectralMeat wrote on Mar 21, 2013, 19:17:Kind of like Steam's version of kickstarter

Not quite. A better analogy would be Steam's version of pay as you participate in development. Kickstarters often are only projects, sometimes without prototypes, here there has to be something to be sold, an alpha or beta.

Closed Betas wrote on Mar 21, 2013, 18:19:Hell, why not pay for Arma 4 already with that logic

Your logic is flawed in several points.

The games are using the money to fund their team and as such they are marked not as pre-orders but alphas and betas that are still being worked on. The way you present your argument gives the idea you equal this to pre-orders. Not so. Pre-orders are about finished games that do not need the extra money to be completed, these do need the extra money to help completion.

Unlike pre-orders this is just a different business model that has worked in a long time. Minecraft made this model famous, Desura calls it Alpha-funding and many people use it on Desura's service. Whereas a pre-order guarantees a finished game, this guarantees your voice in the feedback loop and helps the developers.

There is no disingenuous aspect of this. Steam, and Desura and the tons of indie devs that adopted and adopt this model, make sure to let everyone know the product you're getting is alpha, unfinished, buggy. You know what you're getting here, unlike pre-orders. It's only a question of wanting to support the development of a game or waiting to buy a full game later on.

And also, you are not buying on a dream with this model, you are buying an existing product even if it's alpha. You get something with your money and you get the chance to shape it, depending on the dev team's approach to user feedback.

Closed Betas wrote on Mar 20, 2013, 23:13:Ingenious? God, I need to get a product and get into marketing or something. Fools are down from a dime a dozen to a dime a gross.

Wake up, They're selling beta's, there's no magical interface in between... There's no special designed coded section.. it's the same platform, the same feedback system, lol. They market what 90% of you bithc on forums about what you hate and you suck it up like its some new form of wheat product

Except they are clearly marking it as not yet finished. Better than selling crap like simcity as supposedly finished product when its not.

Caslon wrote on Mar 20, 2013, 23:10:I'm interested in checking out ARMA 3 alpha or beta. Does this news mean I don't have to pre-order this game to sample it? That's the only way you can play the ARMA alpha now, by pre-ordering it.

Hit up the Blue's group on steam - I think more than a few people have invites.

I think if you play the class action lawsuit game with them and their heavily publically promoted FREE community alpha, you'll get a free invite to the phoney lite version.. the alpha itself is nothing more than a demo

Ingenious? God, I need to get a product and get into marketing or something. Fools are down from a dime a dozen to a dime a gross.

Wake up, They're selling beta's, there's no magical interface in between... There's no special designed coded section.. it's the same platform, the same feedback system, lol. They market what 90% of you bithc on forums about what you hate and you suck it up like its some new form of wheat product

Krizzen wrote on Mar 20, 2013, 19:19:Whew! At first I imagined Valve was offering a subscription based service for early access. Looks like they'll maintain their "do no evil" image!

No, valve doesn't in and of themselves.

They do sell games that require monthly fees though. And theoretically one of those games could be an early access game. Currently I don't see any like that.

And actually, now that I think of it, I'd pay valve $10 a month to get access to all early access games as long as I got the full games afterward their release (and kept access even if I stop paying the subscription). So it would cost me $120 a year, but I'd have $300 worth of games, or whatever, and even if I stop paying the subscription I get to keep all those games

Whew! At first I imagined Valve was offering a subscription based service for early access. Looks like they'll maintain their "do no evil" image!

yuastnav wrote on Mar 20, 2013, 16:55:Kerbal Space program also looked interesting (at least judging by this article from Christopher Livingston on PCGamer, guess I gotta try the demo).

If you have more than a passing interest in space, Kerbal Space Program is AMAZING. It's nice to see it hit Steam (in some form). You'll probably be hitting the Wiki and forums if you don't know what an apoapsis or periapsis are. It's such a rewarding experience to build your own rocket and payload, launch it into orbit, and land on the moon.

jdreyer wrote on Mar 20, 2013, 17:53:This is a very interesting development. It's like Steam's answer to Kickstarter, but with no go/no go goal. The remarks don't seem to indicate whether the feedback will be restricted to purchasers only. Currently, Steam forums are totally open. You'd think that the devs would want to restrict the forums only to people who purchased the game.

Well that would take extra work on valve's part. The uninteresting and unfun kind.

This is actually a sad truth that I am reminded of every time I use Steam (or rather use the steam interface beyond just playing games).

jdreyer wrote on Mar 20, 2013, 17:53:This is a very interesting development. It's like Steam's answer to Kickstarter, but with no go/no go goal. The remarks don't seem to indicate whether the feedback will be restricted to purchasers only. Currently, Steam forums are totally open. You'd think that the devs would want to restrict the forums only to people who purchased the game.

Well that would take extra work on valve's part. The uninteresting and unfun kind.

This is a very interesting development. It's like Steam's answer to Kickstarter, but with no go/no go goal. The remarks don't seem to indicate whether the feedback will be restricted to purchasers only. Currently, Steam forums are totally open. You'd think that the devs would want to restrict the forums only to people who purchased the game.

ASeven wrote on Mar 20, 2013, 17:11:People talk about the price of Prison Architect but they don't know the story behind it. The price is purposely high because, not unlike Minecraft, they are funding their own game this way. They decided not to go to Kickstarter and do it their own way and they succeeded in selling more than $1M of alphas in 8 months. Also, they made the price high to ensure those coming to the alpha would stick to the alpha and offer feedback.

Hence, if this title fancies you and you want to support the devs, go ahead and get the alpha. Otherwise, wait for release day where the price will be cheaper.

StarForge was interesting, but full of suck when I tried it last year. I remember looking in to it further, and the people that had pre-ordered were still stuck on a fairly old build. Videos of the game would show one thing while the players were given another.

I wonder if they'll do more frequent updates here on Steam. It looks like a ton of fun.